What's done is done
by GDeacur
Summary: A short, hard oneshot about Cyborg. After the accident, he wakes up and thinks...


**What's done is done**

A white ceiling.

That was the first thing that the one who would call himself "Cyborg" saw when he regained consciousness. It was similar to the feeling he got when he usually woke up after a bad night's sleep – his mouth was slightly dry, and his unfocused, hazy vision moved him to blink a few times to restore clarity to the world.

He tried his best not to think too much about what had transpired; the accident, the screaming, the panic, the ambulance ride. But there was no use in trying to forget what had happened. Every painful detail was branded eternally into his memory. Mercifully, there was a pleasant span of nothingness from the latter part of the ambulance ride (when those wonderfully potent anesthetics started working) to the last phase of the operation… and the initiation of the many prosthetic components of his body.

Roughly two thirds of his body was lost – saved – including half of his brain. It was thanks to this newer half that he knew every detail about his new self. Indeed, his perspective of the world was changed since his "activation."

He could now do much more than just _stare_ at the white ceiling. He could tell instantly what material the ceiling was made of, what shade of white it was painted, and even what distance separated it from his mechanical eye - to a thousandth of an inch.

_I have to see myself_, he thought.

He sat up with ease in the long hospital bed. There were heavy white curtains on three sides of him, a wall at his back, and complete silence. He found the peace a surprisingly pleasant contrast to all the recent chaos.

He next took a good look at his new arms. Where he once saw flesh, he now saw circuits underneath a translucent blue.

_Efficient, too._

His hands were mostly white, with some dull grey portions that almost seemed like armor plating.

_And so are my torso and legs._

Despite the white blanket covering the bottom portion of his body, he knew.

And yet, he still wanted to see for himself. His head, his face… he wanted to see his face. Of course it was unnecessary – his entire specifications were embedded into the mechanical part of his mind. But to see it with his eye… his _real_ eye, the one he was born with… the urge was becoming insatiable.

He wanted a mirror. But he felt glued to his bed, as though it wasn't time for him to step outside the curtains yet.

A faint tapping sound in the distance interrupted his thoughts.

It gradually came closer.

The curtains brushed aside, and a woman stepped into his space. She wore a white surgeon's gown with a white cap and a white, cloth thin mask over her face. She stared at him through her large, round glasses for a moment before smiling, as he could tell by the skin shifting around her upper cheeks. She then came to his right side and sat down on the small sliver of bed that was alongside his leg.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, with such beautiful sincerity.

Analysis of her voice patterns revealed it as fast as his human intuition could.

He didn't answer.

"You woke up a little early," she consoled, with a delicate, gentle voice. "But you're okay. You look great. The operation was a complete success!"

"**Yeah**," he whispered. Though his voice now held a mechanical tinge, it still betrayed his lingering shock and disbelief. "**I know**…."

The two stared at each other in silence for a few moments, before the nurse started to rise.

"I'll go alert your family…"

"**Wait!**" he implored, thrusting out his arm to her shoulder. She promptly sat back to her previous position and looked him in the eye.

"What can I do?"

He stared at her intently.

He stared at _himself_ intently.

The faint reflection on her glasses was enough. He could finally see exactly what he had expected to see. The left half of his head was the same translucent blue as his arms and his thighs. His left jaw was grey, as was the aperture in the side of his head that was now his left ear. His left eye was glowed a pale red. His mouth was still his own, but that was deception – he knew that the larynx through which he spoke was not.

"**It's nothing.**"

He removed his arm from off her shoulder and leaned back to the way he was when he awoke.

"Are you sure?"

He sat there, countless thoughts swarming through the right side of his brain.

He asked himself what he had become, and what he would yet become. He wondered how he would tell his friends. He questioned his own existence. He doubted if he was still the same man, by whatever in the universe defined a "man", as he was before any of this had happened. He pleaded in desperation that time could be turned back, or that he would awaken from this nightmare.

And for each of those thoughts, the left side answered with the same four words.

_What's done is done_.


End file.
